HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 105**

Chapter One Hundred and Five

I sometimes miss the days when life was simpler.

When I was a little kid, back before the incident with my broken neck and all the times of stress and pain and fear and emotional struggle began, life seemed better. I've said it before, but I was a rather happy baby, and I hadn't wanted for very much. I'd never even really thought about toys or games the way other children did--because I'd never needed them. Before I'd realized what certain scents meant, I'd had the arms of my family, and whenever I'd wanted love, I'd always, always reached out to be cuddled and held by warm, powerful arms.

Who needed toys when the guys in my family were far more fun to play with? Looking back now, even as a toddler I'd reached for their direct love and affection... almost as if I'd felt that the one branch of love that should have been there had always been missing.

However, the simplicity of my desires changed the morning I'd received my very first gift from Rex and David Meyer. Unlike the rest of the guys in the pack, who'd done their best to raise me and love me in place of my alienated and mentally struggling father, they'd hated me for being the reason he was in such a bad place. Back then my dad had gone to bed crying every single night in hotel rooms far from the places we'd always been staying. He'd cried nearly every moment of the day, too, and when he hadn't been crying, he'd been refusing to eat, or talk, or be anywhere his senses could pick up the sound of my voice, my breath, or my heartbeat.

The Meyer brothers had resented me because of it.

The flute was meant to be a cruel, mean-spirited joke, but because I'd never understood why they didn't love me, instead of realizing it was an insult to me, in general, I'd felt... overjoyed when they'd plopped it into my lap and told me to go play music like a satyr.

You see, that's the beauty of innocence: something cruel that a child can't understand until they're older can be a light that makes them happy and gives them inspiration in the moment, because kids aren't corrupted by cynicism.

I, being the dumb little baby that I was, had stupidly thought they were giving me a chance to prove to them that I was a good boy, because it was the first time that they'd ever acknowledged me outside of the occasional dirty look or snide comment. It was the first material gift I'd ever treasured because it was given by somebody who'd made me feel like I wasn't loved.

It had gotten my hopes up, plain and simple.

And, because I'd been so desperate for them to love me, too, I'd tried to play it for days, and days, and days. They'd laughed and sneered and mocked me for being stupid at first, and they'd told me things that stung even now, like how I couldn't even act like a satyr correctly, or how I'd have nothing special if I failed at it since I wasn't good enough to run with werewolves.

They'd thought it was funny at first, and they'd laughed every time their comments made me cry... but still, I'd puffed and puffed and puffed, past runny noses and tears. desperate to make them love me by being good at the gift I'd been given. For weeks I'd tried my hardest because I'd finally been given a chance to be good and I didn't want to risk losing it.

It took a while, but Rex and Dave began to realize that they'd taken their joke too far when they'd gone on a trip and come back two months later to see me still trying my hardest to make the flutes work, puff-puff-puffing away with little results. They'd actually gotten a little worried upon discovering that their actions and words were actually sinking in and having negative results.

Like, dips in my mood and feeling stupid and sad because I wasn't good enough. Little depreciating things that a six-year-old shouldn't be thinking, things they'd told me... things that the rest of the pack had started noticing and fretting over during their absence. So, one day, while I was practicing in the woods and spitting horribly into the flutes, they'd appeared out of nowhere and tried to take the instrument away from me.